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The Bench Press is one of the most important exercises in push workouts. The muscles primarily involved are the chest, triceps and shoulder muscles.
However, when you do dumbbell or barbell bench press, it requires immense strength to push the weight up to execute the movement. You can do exercises to strengthen your chest and tricep muscles, helping you do the bench press better.
Best Exercises to get better at Bench Press
Here are seven exercises you can do to improve your strength during this compound movement:
1) Finding your three rep max
You should do a maximum of three reps with a particular weight to improve your strength. Usually, your maximum PR is when you can do one rep with a particular weight.
However, when you can do three reps, it helps activate all the muscles around the chest area, especially the smaller muscles. That spurs the smaller and bigger muscles to grow, helping you do other chest exercises better as well.
2) Close Grip Decline Press
This exercise focuses on your triceps. It's important for your triceps to be well developed to be able to withstand resistance.
The close grip decline press ensures that the tricep muscles experience resistance, which forces the muscles to grow and develop further.
3) Military Press
It's important to focus on your shoulders as well. The shoulders are an important joint during exercise. Your aim should be to have a strong set of shoulder muscles, which will help in holding the weight stable as you push it away from your body during the bench press.
The Military press is a good way to ensure that the shoulder muscles develop in a way that can withstand the impact of the bench press.
4) Overhead Dumbbell Press
Another exercise that focuses on your shoulders is the Overhead Dumbbell Press. In fact, you can use light weights to do this exercise so that it works as a burnout set. The more volume you add to your workouts, the better it is to increase strength and power.
5) Heavy Drop Set
A drop set is always recommended to increase strength. It helps the muscles experience volume and intensity during the same set, forcing the fibres to grow thicker and stronger to be able to resist the additional force during future workouts.
6) Push-ups
One of the best ways to improve your strength is by doing bodyweight workouts. If your goal is to improve doing the bench press, you should focus on doing push-ups, both wide grips and close grip. That helps with focusing on your chest muscles as well as triceps.
7) Static Holds
One of the best ways to improve muscle endurance and strength for bench press is static holds. Static holds help in improving the muscle group targeted as well as improving core strength.
You can do static holds when doing bodyweight movements, such as push-ups or during the press itself when you hold the weight once you've reached the top of the motion.
